Post-Exvangelical: Reflections on Cambridge Christianity and the Potentially Subversive Spaces within Evangelicalism
Beams of light pierce the stained glass, illuminating the vague circle of subjects below in their softened hues. The liturgy is coming to a close, and I stand in the middle of the aisle, surrounded by a sea of familiar faces. Some are young and spirited like mine, while others are wrinkled with the wisdom of experience and time. Their eyes are closed and their arms touch my shoulders as they begin to sing a traditional Irish hymn of farewell. As the blessing concludes, I can’t help but to wipe a tear away from my face, afraid that someone might see it and mimic my sign of mourning.
A few days later, I find myself in the middle of a living room, surrounded by a choir of young men. Some are engineers, others are chemists and biologists. Some are married, while others are still swimming in the sea of singleness. All of their eyes, however, are trained on me, as I hold aloft a single loaf of bread. I recite a prayer and begin to recount the narrative of the Passion. Lifting a single glass of wine, I then begin to bless the blood-red liquid within it, knowing that with its consumption, the blessing is actually among us, in all of its flesh and blood. Distributing the elements, we begin to consume them, all together in this divine magic trick, a sacrament of redirection and renewal. My friends then gather around me, place their hands on my head and shoulders, and recite their heartfelt prayers of thanksgiving and blessing.
Two years ago, I wrote a piece detailing my departure from an evangelical community in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I detailed my pain and confusion that accompanied that decision, and whether I would find a spiritual home. In the two accounts above, the former is my sweet departure from the progressive community that I found at the end of the last piece. The latter, however, is my similarly-structured final departure from that same evangelical church that I decidedly left two years ago. And while the entire progressive church that adopted me amidst my spiritual homelessness knew and celebrated my time with them, the latter small group of evangelicals were the only ones in the church to know that I was leaving. To be fair, they were the only ones to know that I was, in some small way, still a part of their community.
Several months after saying my final goodbyes to that evangelical church, it turns out that they were not done with me. To my bewilderment, I was asked to be a small-group leader, which after several beers and conversations, I politely turned down. They still extended a hand of invitation to their small group, and despite all the hurt and confusion that the church had caused, I decided to attend, if nothing else than to put to rest any notion that I actually belonged in that community.
I wasn’t expecting what would eventually happen.
The Virtue of Theological Agitation: Opening up Spaces of Subversion and Transparency
Admittedly, in this small group, I took upon myself the role as a kind of theological agitator. For someone so averse to conflict, I admittedly do like to poke the proverbial theological bear every now and then (or stir the pot, depending on your preference for metaphors). I remember one of the first weeks, we were discussing the topic of prayer. We were asked about our thoughts on prayer, and after enduring an extended awkward silence in the room, I decided to break the tension.
“Honestly, I really suck at praying,” I bluntly blurted. “In fact, I have a difficult time knowing whether prayer actually does anything, or whether it’s a way for us to process our own emotions and traumas,” I stammered. There was an palpable shift in the room, as if the unmentionable, taboo truth had been articulated. With an audible sigh of relief, another person echoed my sentiment, saying “Oh, I really struggle with that too. It’s kind of hard to reconcile it in my head, so thanks for saying that.”
In the following hour, we discussed our own histories, struggles, and interpretations about prayer, each feeling a weight lifting from our shoulders that allowed us to be brutally honest. In the following months, this was my role within the evangelical community: to be a voice of discontent and dissent whenever we found ourselves too comfortable in our pat answers or unquestioned assumptions. I mostly listened during the meetings, but would interject and mediate conflict or tension whenever it rose, not to diffuse it, but rather to hold and extend it, finding truth in the inherent antagonism.
Through my experiences in this small group, I realized something unexpected. Most of the men in the group also felt the same way that I did. Many of them had strong issues with the way the church handled topics such as politics and race. Most of them disagreed with the sermons that the pastor preached and the harsh tone that the leadership often took. Some even contemplated leaving, just as I had.
I realized that, while from the outside, it’s easy to evaluate and dismiss evangelical communities based on the hardline stances of their leadership, there often is also an underground, subversive contingent of discontented congregants who believe that the only way to save the community they love so much from the grips of fundamentalism is to stay, hoping that they can slowly but surely affect change from within.
Post-Exvangelical, or, Deconstructing a Deconstructing Community
Two years ago, in the midst of my spiritual homelessness, I would have completely identified with what’s known as the “Exvangleical” movement. In the wake of the 2016 election, a contingent of those attending evangelical churches were incredibly disturbed at how their pastors, elders, and fellow congregants could support a candidate who’s actions are wholly incompatible with the Gospel. Dominating certain corners of the Twittersphere, the Exvangelical movement consists of a group of ex-evangelicals who, in the process of their theological deconstruction, have rallied together in their common denouncement of evangelical culture and the toxic behaviors/ideologies that it often produces. Taking on subjects such as purity culture, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, women’s rights, and the tendency for evangelicals to cozy up with conservative politics, “Exvangelicals” decry (and rightly so) the abuses of these dominant structures of power. It has also been an active voice in the #MeToo movement, specifying and calling out abuse with #churchtoo and #emptythepews. Their presence is not to be minimized, as it also boasts a largely successful podcast, as well as an article in The Guardian detailing its development.
The positive effects of this movement cannot be overstated. Websites such as Church Clarity help those who identify as LGBTQIA+ to determine whether a particular church community will welcome them and accept them into leadership positions. The movement has brought the patriarchal structure of traditional evangelicalism to the forefront of public discourse, highlighting the continuing, faithful work of women within the wide expanse of the Christian tradition. It has helped to fight against the stigma of mental illness and spiritual trauma within the church, as well as push back against the culture of sexual shame that is perpetuated in many conservative spaces. For those who are recently in the throes of leaving such claustrophobic spaces, as I once was, such a community can be a literal God-send, a liferaft of sanity in the sea of uncertainty.
Yet, now in the wake of being entrenched in this community, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to continue to identity with the Exvangelical movement, which seems to feed on resentment more so than righteous anger. Far too often, I see members of this community casting a wide and indiscriminate blanket of derision upon those within evangelical spaces, lashing out at dissenting voices as a result of their own pain and unresolved trauma. Constructing an identity around a shared source of trauma can indeed be cathartic and create a strong sense of community. Yet, by proxy, evangelicalism is still the basis for such a constructed identity, even if it’s related to in a negative way. This can cause such a community to become fixated at the source of trauma without finding meaningful ways of moving beyond it. By continuing to wrap a religious identity around a negative praxis, we are stunting our own potential for growth and change. While it is healthy to recognize the damage that such communities have caused and to be loved through the healing process, it is also unhealthy to continue to pick the personal scab.
Furthermore, there are some ex-evangelicals who tend to paint the communities they have left with incredibly broad strokes, effectively Othering those within evangelicalism whom still wrestle with their identities. We tend to be the harshest towards those we have the closest affinities to, and we thus lash out at the communities we have left as a way to distance ourselves from what we hate about ourselves that we continue to see in the Other. Evangelicalism thus becomes a static, fixed category, and all that is potentially beneficial about such communities, all of the beautiful things that kept us there is overshadowed by the potential abuse endured, and is thus completely leveled and destroyed in our condemnation of the whole system.The proverbial baby is thrown out with the bathwater, as any vestige of belief resembling the faith they previously held is regarded as “toxic” and “dangerous.” This is not an unfounded complaint. To be sure, there is plenty to critique within evangelical doctrine and dogma.
However, a theology is not inherently toxic just because we disagree with it; rather, it becomes so when it is detrimental to our mental, physical, or spiritual health. One aspect that never settled rightly with me in more progressive spaces is just how uncritical we can be of our own theologies and practices, preferring instead to point the finger and gloat in our own “liberated” moral superiority. In our own resentment toward the Other (and what we see of ourselves in them), we tend to overcorrect and self-flagellate to the point that we become the very thing that we despise, albeit in a different guise. There is a distinct difference between anger and resentment: one is the proper Christian response to injustice, while the other is a denial of the Christian virtue of forgiveness. There is often a subtle undercurrent of pride in such communities of resentment, as if many of those within evangelicalism don’t also see the glaring issues and systemic abuses within the spaces they occupy. By elevating ourselves as the enlightened ones, the ones who saw through the BS and had the courage to leave, we often denigrate and demean those who willingly choose to remain in such spaces, for better or for worse. All of us are on different parts of the process of faith. If we are to move forward in our pursuit of reconciliation and justice, we all need to be able to cultivate and extend grace to those who are on a different path.
As such, in the wake of the evangelical exodus of 2017, it has become a kind of cliche for ex-evangelicals to pivot toward mainline, typically Anglican/Episcopal denominations (a charge in which I find myself guilty as well). We believe that the grass is greener on the other side, and in doing so, tend to be naive to the fundamental core issues that permeate those more liberal communities (such as it’s overwhelming affinity and saturation of white, middle-upper class congregants). These communities can preach and advocate for diversity all we want (which should be commended), but if the core of our convictions are to be found in our material commitments rather than our words, then those of us in more theologically liberal communities still have a long and difficult reckoning ahead of us. In our reluctance to deal with our own spiritual trauma, we often vehemently reject and push away any vestige of our former lovers, only to find ourselves blissfully unaware and lost in the honeymoon stupor of an identical soul that simply bears a different face.
This is not to say that, by any means, I’m letting evangelical churches off the hook, so to speak. I must confess, there are times when I start to believe that perhaps I was too close to evangelical culture, and that time away would make the heart grow fonder of the spirituality I used to claim. Yet, time and time again, I’ll visit an evangelical church, either on my own or with a group of friends, and be all too painfully reminded of why I left and just how estranged from the world of evangelicalism I really am.
For example, I used to understand all the in-jokes regarding hackneyed worship songs and trends in the church. Now, I feel like its a completely foreign language. I’ll read the full doctrinal statement as the worship band is setting up, only to eventually see how their policy is to excommunicate any member who identifies as LGBTQIA+, and then listen as the pastor rants for two hours about the evils of feminism and socialism in American society. If sermons are supposed to be a blessing unto the community, like a soft rain upon a quenched field of wheat, then my experiences with American evangelicalism is more like a thunderstorm that devastates the harvest in it’s bludgeoning, unbearable wake. There is real damage being done in these communities in the name of love, which can be used to justify a litany of evils. Yet, if we are to get beyond digging trenches in our fixed theological identities, we need to pivot from what we believe to how we believe, and how our beliefs affect our own sense of self and our perception of the Other.
Some of my friends in evangelical spaces believe that their only recourse is to leave such an environment. Others believe that their time in these spaces is well spent, and that they can perhaps change the toxic culture from the inside. Many of my friends, whom I deeply love and respect, actively choose to remain in such spaces. They continue to do great work for their community and manage to love others well, even in spite of the ways in which their exclusivist doctrines and leadership are often antithetical to the radical love of the Gospel. I defend their decision to stay, just as I wholeheartedly support anyone’s decision to remove themselves from such environments for their own health. I’m not here to say which one is right. Both are legitimate responses, and it is solely the responsibility of the individual to make such a decision. Either way, we need to be able to cultivate spaces in which people, regardless of their personal decision, are allowed to question, wrestle, and grow in their faiths.
No church is perfect. We all have our misgivings and shortcoming, biases and blind spots. The question is whether we’re courageous enough to be honest about them, holding them to the light, interrogating their place within our community and how we can better ourselves and our communities. Instead of holding onto personal grudges, in order for the Exvangelical movement to have any productive future, it must primarily seek to heal and attend to those who have been hurt, while also addressing the systemic causes of such abuse. This is the core beauty at the heart of the movement, and it has done much good work in this regard. But if we continue to navel gaze at our own suffering and victimhood, however real and difficult it may be, then we will surely miss those still in abusive communities who are reaching out, just as we once were, desperately needing to be heard. If someone is drowning, we don’t grab a bucket to empty the ocean or raise awareness of the dangers of swimming.
Rather, we jump in.
Still “Spiritually Homeless?”: Embracing a Faith of Radical Terror, Lack, and Love
In light of all of this, you may be asking: where I stand in my faith now? While I have no aspirations of saving a dying institution, I also refuse to simply walk away from my faith. I can't begin to express how thankful I am for both the evangelical and progressive communities that have nurtured and grown my faith. I learn both beautiful and difficult lessons from every community that I’ve inhabited, and to completely disavow any one part of my journey is to do a great disservice to the ways in which God can use broken fragments to make a beautiful mosaic. Increasingly though, I find that my home as a theologian is not found within the sacred walls of the church, no matter how comfortable they may seem. Rather, my home is in the world, among the fractured fragments of these communities. If faith is less about what we believe and more about how we relate to our own unbelief, then creating spaces in which we can express and learn to unbelieve is the central task of any truly radical, emancipatory spiritual community.
We often involve ourselves in spiritual communities as an attempt to fulfill a lack within us and to find our identity in a power larger than ourselves. This, in itself, is not necessarily bad. It becomes detrimental, however, when we believe that our lack and desire can be filled by such a community, and we over-identify ourselves with our community or ideology, thus throwing us into crisis when it inevitably fails us. If we were, however, to allow our churches to be spaces in which we share and dwell within our own lack rather than ignoring it or trying to fill it with religious activities, then we could begin to hold space for radical communities of love centered on true brokenness. The first step is to simply admit such a thing to ourselves in the first place, embracing the lack within us while holding on to the promise of Resurrection, no matter how unlikely it may seem.
Practically, I’m not opposed to one day joining a formal church, yet I know that my identity does not lie in the doctrinal creeds and confessions of any one ideological edifice. Rather, it is in the death of our identities, in the very fractures and fissures of our traditions, in their glorious paradoxes and shortcomings, that life finds a home. To demolish the spiritual scaffolding that we construct in the place of faith, we open ourselves up to face, perhaps for the first time, the radical terror of the void that lies before us.
Faith, at its core, is a risk. In his seminal work. Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard describes Abraham’s movement of faith as a paradox: he is simultaneously willing to surrender the world (Isaac) while also expecting its return. However, nothing is guaranteed in faith. In his Postscript, he writes, “where there is certainty, there is no faith...where there is no risk, there is no faith.” Faith is a willingness to trust, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles and impossible risk.
The questions I always return to, even in the deepest seasons of doubt, are these:
When I lack all conviction, do I throw up my hands and give up, renouncing everything I once believed?
Or do I lean into the antagonism and tension, chasing after faith and finding true life in the cracks and fissures?
Do I abandon my community when I get weary and tired, when God seems lost and so distant?
Or do I pray to a faraway God “I believe, help my unbelief?”
In all of this, I could very easily make the case for the institutional church to stay as a necessary part of the Christian tradition. I could also just as easily make the argument to burn it all down and start again from scratch, believing that the church is too far corrupted to be redeemed. Yet, despite all my contentions with this issue, something keeps calling me forward into the unknown. The insistence of God issuing a call to a new Kingdom. What exactly that looks like, I’m not entirely sure. All I can do is to remind myself to keep an open heart and mind towards the Other, in hopeful anticipation of who we were created to be. No matter what theological background we come from, we’re all going to fail each other. We’re going to cause hurt and strife. We all see through a glass darkly, stumbling forward towards a future yet to be seen. Yet, if we allow love to break us open, to reveal the vulnerabilities, uncertainties, and fragments within our sense of selfhood, then we can truly begin to echo the heavens here on earth. But that requires an incredible amount of risk.
Faith is always a risk. And it often makes no sense at all. My guide, Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, defied all expectations of what it means to be a subject in this world. Through his life, ministry, and resurrection, we see the scapegoat transform into the revolutionary subject. With Terry Eagleton, I also believe that “God is most present in the dispossessed.” Only by encountering the truly traumatic core of Christianity can we begin the process of self-dispossession and self-remaking (“in theological terms, repentance and conversion”). Through the monstrous Incarnation, the given social order is dissolved, thus clearing spaces for reconstruction. In the dissolution of our religious identity, we stand at the precipice of a vast emptiness, with no explicit guarantee of return, but holding onto the hope of Resurrection. And, if we take our cue from Kierkegaard, only one question remains:
Do we have the faith to jump?